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"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Andy Staples 'what if' article on SI

"Those who want to know how one first down in one game in 2004 could create an all-Big Ten BCS title game, a national title for Lane Kiffin, a bronze statue of Mike Shula and 16-team superconferences should keep reading."

Staples's scenario basically moves the controversy up by about five years. Instead of having Alabama-LSU be the huge catalyst for change, it makes Michigan-OSU the catalyst. In 2006, Michigan and OSU were clearly pretty evenly matched, but were probably not the best two teams given what transpired in the respective bowl games. This year was probably different. I don't see Oklahoma State staying on the field with either LSU or Alabama given the month to prepare for their bowl games and LSU had already PAC 12 champion Oregon earlier in the season. This sort of thing is going to happen if there isn't a conference champion requirement.

That game was much less balanced than the first Alabama vs LSU game. LSU basically squatted on Oregon and were up by 17 going into the 4th quarter. In contrast, Alabama missed several field goals that its kicker normally would have made to lose its game to LSU.

It's hard for a voter to get beyond that, in my mind. Oklahoma State did, in my mind, get screwed, but they probably shouldn't have lost to Iowa State in their next to last game of the season. Alabama may be evil, but was there really a better pick out there?

There are certainly plenty of reasons Oregon should NOT have played for the title and I'm not saying they should have. It was just interesting to me that the only reason you originally gave was that LSU beat them earlier in the season, all things considered.

Alabama missed too many field goals, Oregon fumbled the football too many times. Take both of those factors away from those games and maybe LSU loses two games last year. Rationalized loses is a ridiculous metric to grade teams on.

Regardless of any of that stuff, Oregon had two loses and had no business being in the title game discussion.

Alabama outplayed LSU - had their kicker been below average instead of awful, that game never goes into OT and Alabama wins. Oregon, OTOH, was outplayed by LSU, and had they not fumbled they would have had a shot to win, but still maybe not (the score is a little misleading since Oregon scored with 13 second left in the game. If he doesn't score there, it's a 20 point deficit). Plus - you need to give LSU credit for at least a few of Oregon's turnovers - LSU was a great defensive team. You really can't give LSU credit for Alabama's missed FGs though.

And the deaths weren't just two names the players couldn't put a face to, that were associated by affiliation alone. The players saw these two coaches on a regular basis, sometimes daily. At OSU (ntosu), they have a separate dining facility devoted to three teams: football and men's and women's basketball. That's not to say the players knew these coaches well, but I'm sure that did affect their trsm perfomance. Btw. according to my daughter who served food in this cafeteria, the food was top notch, not your average college cafeteria fare.

I think you missed out, he went into hella detail, which, was good for a summer article. Covering 06-11 in that amout had to take a good of amount of time. Majority of it you could believe it could have happened.

UM at MSU, battered the whole game, the Wolverines just scored staging a miraculous 4th quarter come back making the score 20-21. Coach Rich Rodriguez realizing that his defense wasn't playing that well and that his offense is his only chance. He believes in his offense and so he decides to gamble everything on a 2 point conversion with just seconds to play. Sensational freshman Tate Forcier nursing nagging injuries and badly beaten up in the game comes to the line and on a quick count sprints for the wide side. He pumps once faking the MSU outside containment man to leave his feet and just squeezes into the endzone before he is piled under. Michigan wins 22-21 as time expires. Spartan stadium is silent except for the wind blowing the trash and whoops of joy as the Wolverines run to the locker room.

Rich Rodriguez made many poor decisions while coaching here, but I don't thnik this was one of them. The defense wasn't playing that horribly and more importantly, Tate was absolutely gassed. Had he not been, I would have agreed with the decision to go for two, but I didn;t have a problem with that call there.

"At worst we failed at trying to do the right thing rather than succeed at doing the wrong thing.."

One thing that season taught us is that Robinson could not hit the broad side of a barn that season (worse, the snap would have been 10 yards over his head, and been a recovered fumble, or a return for 2 points in the wrong direction). The MSU defense would have overplayed to the run ... and guessed right.

In an alterante timeline, this would have been the moment when Meyer realized that the dude he met at a conference who said he was the Patriots' OC actually meant something by "schematic advantage", right?

"Funny isn't it, how naughty dentists always make that one fatal mistake."